I think for myself this is the most exciting part of the system,although it is a PITA. Have fun........Steve.
Doctor's Orders-Part Two-The New Listening Room Of Steve Williams
- Thread starter Steve williams
- Start date
I think for myself this is the most exciting part of the system,although it is a PITA. Have fun........Steve.
I LOVE my Odin 2 Phono cable. I'm excited to compare them with the Ultra Phonos. I have no intentions of selling the Odin 2. I'll have the Ultra on my second Elite. Having both with give me another variable to play with as I switch carts and wands around. Synergy hunting
Jack, looking forward to your comparison. I have Odin but have not heard Odin 2 in my system. That is intentional by the way.
Since adding the loom of MB Ultra cables I have been immersing myself in classical music as the enormity of the soundstage has for me proved addicting
Listen to this version of Mahler's 2nd last night and thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish
Listen to this version of Mahler's 2nd last night and thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish
Since adding the Ultra loom I have been awaiting delivery of a pair of Ultra PC's for my amps. In the interim Leif was kind enough to loan me a pair of early MB Reference prototype PC's which are 1/3 the price of the Ultra's.
I was struck instantly as to how good the bass resolution was with some of my go to demo disks using the Reference PC's.
Over the past two years I struggled with a ground loop hum which I was finally able to tame by lifting the grounds on the PC's to my Lamm preamp. Nothing else I did resulted in any positive outcome. Leif left the Reference PC's with me and suggested I place them one my preamp for two reasons
1. Anticipated improvement in sound
2. To discover what if any effect the Reference PC's would have on the ground loop hum.
I switched the PC's last night after he left and as suggested they are now on my preamp with the Ultra PC's on my amp. I listened again this morning and much to my amazement I have no ground loop hum even though I have not lifted the ground on the PC's. I was amazed trying to figure out what is going on
I was struck instantly as to how good the bass resolution was with some of my go to demo disks using the Reference PC's.
Over the past two years I struggled with a ground loop hum which I was finally able to tame by lifting the grounds on the PC's to my Lamm preamp. Nothing else I did resulted in any positive outcome. Leif left the Reference PC's with me and suggested I place them one my preamp for two reasons
1. Anticipated improvement in sound
2. To discover what if any effect the Reference PC's would have on the ground loop hum.
I switched the PC's last night after he left and as suggested they are now on my preamp with the Ultra PC's on my amp. I listened again this morning and much to my amazement I have no ground loop hum even though I have not lifted the ground on the PC's. I was amazed trying to figure out what is going on
Just a thought...in my system my mono blocks can output about 100W in class A and about 1600W in class B...they each have 2 very large toroidal transformers. Whenever I make a grounding change I can always tell if it is positive by how quiet the amplifiers power up.....they can go "bing" quietly or "bong" I think your observation is proof that these cables have much superior grounding shields and termination. Can you tell I love to hear about these grounding stories...lol.
Steve, you mentioned that your new equipment racks elevated your system gain,measured by the volume level indicated. I would be interested if this elevates with the MB ultras.
I have been burning in my loom of Master Built Ultra cables for the past two weeks and last week received a pair of Masterbuilt Ultra PC's which came fresh from the manufacturer without any benefits of several days of cable cooking before I received them. Until they showed up Leif in the interim had loaned me a well seasoned pair of Master Built Reference PC's which were several years old with over 1000 hours of use. I also was prepared for a long burn in session because reading accounts from other users here it would appear that 500-1000 hours seemed to be the norm for burn in.
I have to say that there was no comparison between the two as the Reference cable outperformed the Ultra in every aspect but most notably the bass. The bass I was hearing with my 32 wpc amps was beyond anything I had heretofore heard ever in y system. I was expecting miracles when I plugged in the new Ultra PC's . The sound, although very good was extremely polite and the slam that I had heard when using the Reference PC's was now totally gone with the Ultra PC's which cost 4-5 more than the Reference. I knew I was in for a long process. I have been throwing everything at the system that excels in dynamics and will draw current. It wan't until late yesterday afternoon that finally I felt that I had crossed the Rubicon and the now the die was cast. There is now finally top and bottom extension with so much more to hear . The bass is now sounding excellent and with slam BUT still to to the extent that I heard with the Reference. Finally late last night it was beginning to come close before I called it a day.
Had I not been reading other members' comments about the inordinately long burn in time for the Ultra cables I would have been pulling the hair out of my head with exasperation.
The reward with these cables is that patience is a virtue and doing hours each day of critical listening I found this a real exercise hearing the changes that are happening. I remain steadfast in my claim that for my ears I have never heard such a revealing, open, totally neutral cable as these Master Built. I keep saying the best way to demo them is in one's own system
I have to say that there was no comparison between the two as the Reference cable outperformed the Ultra in every aspect but most notably the bass. The bass I was hearing with my 32 wpc amps was beyond anything I had heretofore heard ever in y system. I was expecting miracles when I plugged in the new Ultra PC's . The sound, although very good was extremely polite and the slam that I had heard when using the Reference PC's was now totally gone with the Ultra PC's which cost 4-5 more than the Reference. I knew I was in for a long process. I have been throwing everything at the system that excels in dynamics and will draw current. It wan't until late yesterday afternoon that finally I felt that I had crossed the Rubicon and the now the die was cast. There is now finally top and bottom extension with so much more to hear . The bass is now sounding excellent and with slam BUT still to to the extent that I heard with the Reference. Finally late last night it was beginning to come close before I called it a day.
Had I not been reading other members' comments about the inordinately long burn in time for the Ultra cables I would have been pulling the hair out of my head with exasperation.
The reward with these cables is that patience is a virtue and doing hours each day of critical listening I found this a real exercise hearing the changes that are happening. I remain steadfast in my claim that for my ears I have never heard such a revealing, open, totally neutral cable as these Master Built. I keep saying the best way to demo them is in one's own system
Hi Roger
I have had the CMS racks now for almost 2 months and I am still mesmerized by what they have done to my room. "Silence is golden" and as I stated I have found the need to turn the gain control down by several clicks on my preamp.
When Leif brought the Ultra PC's over last week and we started listening, he turned to me and the first thing he said to me was "am I playing the music at the same gain control on the preamp as he complained the it was too loud. I have found that so much information comes out at the listening side that it becomes difficult for me to comprehend that I need to turn the volume down.
One last caveat that I found to be a real pearl. When I installed my turntable and phono stage last year my system developed a ground loop hum which totally disappeared by lifting the grounds on my preamp power cords.There was no hum at all. Leif decided to leave the pair of Reference PC's that I was using for my amps and suggested that I try them in my preamp. I verbalized to Leif my concern about re awakening that ground loop hum and he said "let's see". Well I was completely gobsmacked because with the Reference PC's on my preamp there was absolutely no ground loop hum.
So to answer your question Roger, my sound floor is not only virtually nonexistent but as a result I have dialed way back on the gain control and have no ground loop hum
It'll be very interesting when MB releases it's star grounding device as I don't know how it could be any quieter than this
Glad to read that you have had positive results Steve. Perhaps smiling when listening I can imagine?
I've been almost completely out of digital for the past year and have been interested in a new DAC but until such a time as I make a final decision on DAC choice I wanted to push the limits of my Playback Designs MPS-5. I have the USB-Xll box which does all PCM up to 384 and up to DSD128. Andreas has finally released his USB Xlll box which now can ply up to DSD 2r6 as well as so many other functions that the last USB Xll box just didn't do. Andreas has also made the box powered with its own power supply. I had opportunity to listen for several hours yesterday and I must say that even though the PD MPS-5 has been around for many years it still sounds darn good to my ears. So until such time as I decide on a DAC this new creation by Andreas has left me a happy camper for now.
This new box utilizes only a single optical glass cable unlike a pair of optical glass cables used in USB Xll box
This new box utilizes only a single optical glass cable unlike a pair of optical glass cables used in USB Xll box
Lol...
You are right about that. the Reference killed it.
That's an embarrassing moment for me when the $4k Reference PC outperforms the one costing 4 times as much. But I know this is just break in. I have the Reference PC's at home and I love them. Not to mention they are much more affordable and still deliver a high performance IMO. They were also the very first cable we had received from MasterBuilt in the beginning.
Very curious to see what changes takes place over the next few days. This is the first time we had a PC with absolutely no burn in time.
This past weekend was filled with fun and music. My good friend Marty and his wife traveled from NJ to spend a weekend listening to music, dining, seeing a great movie and .....listening to music.
I have said here many times that whenever Marty visits there always is some tweaking involved with my system and at the end of his visit when he leaves my system always sounds better,. This past week was no exception. First off we had a great lunch on the ocean at the Laguna Hotel in Laguna Breach followed by a movie (Hidden Figures--highly recommended). So it wasn't until after 9:00 PM Friday that we finally got a chance to listen.
I remain like a kid in toy land with my new loom of Master Built Ultra cables. As many member owners of MB have posted here it seems that the burn in process remains long especially with Ultra PC's. In fact 2 weeks ago when Leif delivered the new Ultra PC's and I removed the early version Reference PC's from my amps and inserted the new Ultra PC's my soundstage and all the richness totally collapsed. The sound was good but the magic that i heard earlier had now shrunk to average and I was worried that the burn would be far from incomplete before Marty's visit. I spent every day of the next two weeks playing CD's which were highly dynamic and I knew would draw a lot of current through the two new Ultra PC's. The bass slam that I had experienced with the loaner Reference PC's was gone. The bottom end of my sound system sounded average. It took the better part of the next 10days playing music 8-10 hours a day that the PC's finally opened up and the bass slam that I was hearing before was now back, so much so that it made me smile knowing the such bass slam was being elicited by my modest 32 wpc amps.
Marty had auditioned the Signature IC's in his home with loaners from Leif but he had not heard the Ultra cables until his visit this weekend. I believe he was most impressed with what he heard. What we did discover was that with the amazing sonic changes heard with the Ultra cables resulted in a significant degradation in performance from my twin Fathom 113 subs.In fact the music sounded better with the subs off. The next day Marty sat in the sweet spot as we played his four famous demo disks, one of which was devoted entirely to bass. After several hours of massaging the crossover of the subs as well as the master volume and ELF control, the sub we felt was integrated better than ever before with the main speakers. In fact doing an a/b test of subs on vs off was very difficult to tell apart if you only listened to one or the other. Playing one after the other created only a subtle change and with subs on created some added ambience without the bottom end screaming out to catch listener's attention.
We did make some simple and minor adjustments to my Wilson X2's with a result that was so different that all I could do was scratch my head and wonder how is this possible. What I did I am not going to describe now but prefer to allow Marty to make comments as to what we did and how we did it. It took us all of 10 minutes to make the changes which were so negligible yet produced such a change in what we were hearing. In retrospect I though it to be shear genius.
I just dropped Marty and his wife off at the airport where he left for San Francisco until Thursday followed by a week in Mexico. As a result his response might be slow coming but it will. I do know Marty is in the process of writing up the developments with his new speakers after which he plans to comment here as t what the simple tweaks was that we did. All I can say is "WTF?"
We also made a very minor change to the anti skate pulley on my SME 3012R tonearm and we were both wide eyed when we heard how it opened the sound stage.
Marty and his wife did spend an extra day because yesterday after 5 hours of delays at the airport his flight to SF was canceled and I brought him back to my house where we again had a long listening session last night.
What we both found most interesting is that the MB cables continues to change all weekend as they continued to open up and the bass came in. In fact last night we listened to 7 records almost in their entirety without either of us so much as saying a word as it was that good.
After I dropped Marty off yesterday and before I had to get him after his flight was cancelled, Leif came by for a few hours also to hear the change in the system. I know he too was truly impressed and even though he manufactures Von Schweikert speakers he commented that he has never heard a Wilson speaker sound as good as yesterday.
I find it difficult to contain my enthusiasm for this cable, as for my ears as well as all of the years I have spent in this hobby, I have never heard a cable that is so neutral yet provides so much information from top to bottom. I have a few more Ultra cables to order but need to take a breath here as they are expensive and I need to order an 8-9 meter Ultra interconnect from my preamp to my amp.
I have had countless requests from members who live close by and others not so close who want to visit to hear these cables so for anyone who is reading this and would like to have an audition, kindly PM me. I have 2 members coming here this Thursday and another i a few weeks from New Jersey. Heck even bonzo75 said he might make a return visit from England.
I have commented before that the most obvious change in one's system with these cables is a need to turn the gain down. Even Marty who loves to listen at ear bleeding spl was asking me to turn down the volume throughout his stay.
I discussed this with Leif and he states that the Master Built engineers voice the cable for 3 things
1. Low reactance
2. Low capacitance
3. they must be neutral. IOW signal coming out is identical to that going in
IMO not only have these MB engineers accomplished what they set out to achieve but that they have done it with aplomb.
And here is the final caveat that I discovered to my chagrin yesterday.......
Those who own MB cables know that there is easily a 3-4 week queue from the time of order to the time of delivery. Leif was worried that the PC's that I ordered would not show up in time and therefore not be burned in i time for Marty's visit. Asa result and unbeknownst to me he brought a brand new pair of Ultra PC's 2 weeks ago which turned out to be a pair that he ordered for the build out of the new Ultra 11 speaker. As a result he told me that he needed his pair back BUT that mine were on order and will show up in a few weeks. He did agree however to leave them until later this week after the visit by two WBF members. I have to admit that I am not looking forward to the collapse of my sound system when he takes back his cables nor an additional 2-3 weeks of more burn in. Yet thinking of the reward and the pie in the sky results only brought a smile to my face.
Finally, both Marty and I at the end of the weekend felt that the bass presentation in the analog side of my system was far better than the digital side. Almost counter intuitive but it was indeed.
More to come........hopefully Marty will find time to make comments about the simple short and highly effective change we made to my speakers
I have said here many times that whenever Marty visits there always is some tweaking involved with my system and at the end of his visit when he leaves my system always sounds better,. This past week was no exception. First off we had a great lunch on the ocean at the Laguna Hotel in Laguna Breach followed by a movie (Hidden Figures--highly recommended). So it wasn't until after 9:00 PM Friday that we finally got a chance to listen.
I remain like a kid in toy land with my new loom of Master Built Ultra cables. As many member owners of MB have posted here it seems that the burn in process remains long especially with Ultra PC's. In fact 2 weeks ago when Leif delivered the new Ultra PC's and I removed the early version Reference PC's from my amps and inserted the new Ultra PC's my soundstage and all the richness totally collapsed. The sound was good but the magic that i heard earlier had now shrunk to average and I was worried that the burn would be far from incomplete before Marty's visit. I spent every day of the next two weeks playing CD's which were highly dynamic and I knew would draw a lot of current through the two new Ultra PC's. The bass slam that I had experienced with the loaner Reference PC's was gone. The bottom end of my sound system sounded average. It took the better part of the next 10days playing music 8-10 hours a day that the PC's finally opened up and the bass slam that I was hearing before was now back, so much so that it made me smile knowing the such bass slam was being elicited by my modest 32 wpc amps.
Marty had auditioned the Signature IC's in his home with loaners from Leif but he had not heard the Ultra cables until his visit this weekend. I believe he was most impressed with what he heard. What we did discover was that with the amazing sonic changes heard with the Ultra cables resulted in a significant degradation in performance from my twin Fathom 113 subs.In fact the music sounded better with the subs off. The next day Marty sat in the sweet spot as we played his four famous demo disks, one of which was devoted entirely to bass. After several hours of massaging the crossover of the subs as well as the master volume and ELF control, the sub we felt was integrated better than ever before with the main speakers. In fact doing an a/b test of subs on vs off was very difficult to tell apart if you only listened to one or the other. Playing one after the other created only a subtle change and with subs on created some added ambience without the bottom end screaming out to catch listener's attention.
We did make some simple and minor adjustments to my Wilson X2's with a result that was so different that all I could do was scratch my head and wonder how is this possible. What I did I am not going to describe now but prefer to allow Marty to make comments as to what we did and how we did it. It took us all of 10 minutes to make the changes which were so negligible yet produced such a change in what we were hearing. In retrospect I though it to be shear genius.
I just dropped Marty and his wife off at the airport where he left for San Francisco until Thursday followed by a week in Mexico. As a result his response might be slow coming but it will. I do know Marty is in the process of writing up the developments with his new speakers after which he plans to comment here as t what the simple tweaks was that we did. All I can say is "WTF?"
We also made a very minor change to the anti skate pulley on my SME 3012R tonearm and we were both wide eyed when we heard how it opened the sound stage.
Marty and his wife did spend an extra day because yesterday after 5 hours of delays at the airport his flight to SF was canceled and I brought him back to my house where we again had a long listening session last night.
What we both found most interesting is that the MB cables continues to change all weekend as they continued to open up and the bass came in. In fact last night we listened to 7 records almost in their entirety without either of us so much as saying a word as it was that good.
After I dropped Marty off yesterday and before I had to get him after his flight was cancelled, Leif came by for a few hours also to hear the change in the system. I know he too was truly impressed and even though he manufactures Von Schweikert speakers he commented that he has never heard a Wilson speaker sound as good as yesterday.
I find it difficult to contain my enthusiasm for this cable, as for my ears as well as all of the years I have spent in this hobby, I have never heard a cable that is so neutral yet provides so much information from top to bottom. I have a few more Ultra cables to order but need to take a breath here as they are expensive and I need to order an 8-9 meter Ultra interconnect from my preamp to my amp.
I have had countless requests from members who live close by and others not so close who want to visit to hear these cables so for anyone who is reading this and would like to have an audition, kindly PM me. I have 2 members coming here this Thursday and another i a few weeks from New Jersey. Heck even bonzo75 said he might make a return visit from England.
I have commented before that the most obvious change in one's system with these cables is a need to turn the gain down. Even Marty who loves to listen at ear bleeding spl was asking me to turn down the volume throughout his stay.
I discussed this with Leif and he states that the Master Built engineers voice the cable for 3 things
1. Low reactance
2. Low capacitance
3. they must be neutral. IOW signal coming out is identical to that going in
IMO not only have these MB engineers accomplished what they set out to achieve but that they have done it with aplomb.
And here is the final caveat that I discovered to my chagrin yesterday.......
Those who own MB cables know that there is easily a 3-4 week queue from the time of order to the time of delivery. Leif was worried that the PC's that I ordered would not show up in time and therefore not be burned in i time for Marty's visit. Asa result and unbeknownst to me he brought a brand new pair of Ultra PC's 2 weeks ago which turned out to be a pair that he ordered for the build out of the new Ultra 11 speaker. As a result he told me that he needed his pair back BUT that mine were on order and will show up in a few weeks. He did agree however to leave them until later this week after the visit by two WBF members. I have to admit that I am not looking forward to the collapse of my sound system when he takes back his cables nor an additional 2-3 weeks of more burn in. Yet thinking of the reward and the pie in the sky results only brought a smile to my face.
Finally, both Marty and I at the end of the weekend felt that the bass presentation in the analog side of my system was far better than the digital side. Almost counter intuitive but it was indeed.
More to come........hopefully Marty will find time to make comments about the simple short and highly effective change we made to my speakers
Hi Steve,
I missed your reply...I'm glad you're in hog heaven so to speak. IIRC when you said your bass sounded like crap,I responded the crappier the better..lol and it's true. A hallmark of real grounding advances in a system is the increase in gain,but it is much more than that.The only way I can explain it is your listening perspective is at the microphone or close to it. Just imagine how the music would sound if that were the case. The sound floor goes down the drain in a good way and you hear things that normally are not revealed. Chassis grounding can be dramatic especially on the low end,but every where else. On top of everything I think the biggest difference is in how the recording is presented. I no longer notice any boundaries,just the recording space,the performers,and the music. I expect that the grounding device will improve the system. I have given up on short breakin times,as any of my grounding changes seem to take 70 hours as the whole system resets.But I have noticed it is cumulative and it is great even getting better. Congrats and glad you are excited, it is a mind blower to be sure and it might get better..
p.s. So the big question is how much common noise is there in a system? Answer...I guess we will find out sooner or later....
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Now that my friend marty has finally done the "big reveal" of his new speakers and has chosen the Wilson X2 S2 as his last best speakerI feel I can now comment about the simple, quick and much to my amazement a highly effective tweak he used to help my system..
http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...at-loudspeaker&p=429261&viewfull=1#post429261
I have known marty for many years and his scientific approach to audio has never ceased to amaze me. I knew 6 weeks ago when he was tearing the hair out of his head with the set up of the speakers that he would get it right. What I found fascinating was the comments about rake angle of the woofer module of the speaker. The longest part of this very simple exercise was the drive to Home Depot to buy a digital level. Using a bubble level my speakers were completely level however when we used the digital level my right speaker was down 0.1 degree and my left speaker was down 0.3 degrees. Marty has found that a quarter turn elongation of the spikes on the front corrects a 0.1 degree change. I was amazed that in fact that was the case and in less than 10 minutes we were done.
Overall effect was a much tighter and better defined bass. I would never have imagined such a small change would create such a big change but nonetheless the facts were the facts. In our measurements with the digital level we also found that even though the bubble stated that my speakers were level the digital level showed a 0.2 degree canting inwards of each speaker. Apparently according to Sunnil Merchant a small 0.2 degree inward cant has been shown for reasons unknown to improve the sound so we decided that what I had was a good thing and we left this unchanged and without correction.
Perhaps marty might find time to comment here as well abut the changes we heard when we adjusted the rake angle of each speaker upward by 0.1-0.3 degrees as the change was more than subtle. This reminded me of a small 1/4" toe out Nick Doshi had me do with my speakers. That change resulted in widening the sound stage at each ear by 8-9 inches. Previously my speaker set up was by Wilson recommendations where the tweeter was focused at each ear. That 1/4" toe out created a huge change at the listening position so I am sure that changing the rake angle by such a small amount resulted in the improved bass we were hearing
http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...at-loudspeaker&p=429261&viewfull=1#post429261
I have known marty for many years and his scientific approach to audio has never ceased to amaze me. I knew 6 weeks ago when he was tearing the hair out of his head with the set up of the speakers that he would get it right. What I found fascinating was the comments about rake angle of the woofer module of the speaker. The longest part of this very simple exercise was the drive to Home Depot to buy a digital level. Using a bubble level my speakers were completely level however when we used the digital level my right speaker was down 0.1 degree and my left speaker was down 0.3 degrees. Marty has found that a quarter turn elongation of the spikes on the front corrects a 0.1 degree change. I was amazed that in fact that was the case and in less than 10 minutes we were done.
Overall effect was a much tighter and better defined bass. I would never have imagined such a small change would create such a big change but nonetheless the facts were the facts. In our measurements with the digital level we also found that even though the bubble stated that my speakers were level the digital level showed a 0.2 degree canting inwards of each speaker. Apparently according to Sunnil Merchant a small 0.2 degree inward cant has been shown for reasons unknown to improve the sound so we decided that what I had was a good thing and we left this unchanged and without correction.
Perhaps marty might find time to comment here as well abut the changes we heard when we adjusted the rake angle of each speaker upward by 0.1-0.3 degrees as the change was more than subtle. This reminded me of a small 1/4" toe out Nick Doshi had me do with my speakers. That change resulted in widening the sound stage at each ear by 8-9 inches. Previously my speaker set up was by Wilson recommendations where the tweeter was focused at each ear. That 1/4" toe out created a huge change at the listening position so I am sure that changing the rake angle by such a small amount resulted in the improved bass we were hearing
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